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Sauce

Vinegar Apple Sauce

A savory sauce made with ham fat, curry powder, flour, water, vinegar, apple pulp, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vinegar Apple Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the ham fat in a frying pan.

  2. Add the curry powder and then the flour to make a paste.

  3. In a separate pot, heat the water, vinegar, grated apple pulp, and allspice.

  4. Combine the heated mixture with the paste and cook until creamy.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together998 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms a paste with the fat that thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Ham fat
Carries the curry powder and forms the base for the flour paste.
Grated apple pulp
Adds body and fruity sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour paste before adding the liquid. Flour must be cooked in fat long enough to lose its raw taste, and the hot liquid must be combined smoothly so lumps do not form and the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, flour, vinegar, allspice, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, flour, vinegar, allspice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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